“Damn. I was hoping we could send Fie in.”
Fie squinted out the window, thinking. She hadn’t yet told Khoda of her plans for tomorrow. “Maybe we still can.”
* * *
“I’ll admit, again,” Tavin said, “this was not what I had in mind.”
Fie propped an unlit torch against her shoulder as they passed under the stone arch, its carved phoenix sneering at them from atop its skulls. “I told you, I like dark secrets.”
A fern could flirt better than that, Niemi scolded.
Fie swallowed. She’d dressed practically, with a minimal glamour to turn her linen tunic and leggings into finer weaves with thicker embroidery. There was no chance of dazzling Tavin with a spectacle of a gown today.
He’d gone first, headed down the steps to a set of heavy-looking bronze doors, a ring of keys swinging from his fingers. She leaned closer to the back of his neck and breathed, “And you said you had a lot to show me.”
Tavin dropped the keys with a clatter. “Er,” he croaked. “That’s … fair.”
There, Niemi said. Better. You might land us a prince after all.
Fie didn’t know if the swell of nausea came from that notion, or from the fact that the Well of Grace had to be only a few dozen paces above her. Either way, she ignored the dead girl and tried to fix her head on what the queen might be hiding.
The bronze doors swung open. Tavin tapped the iron torch in his hand. It kindled with a flurry of gold sparks. He reached for Fie’s torch. “May I?”
It had taken Fie nigh a week to teach him to ask before reaching for her. He’d figured it out in under three days for a Peacock girl.
She gave him a tight-lipped smile and held her torch out.
Once it was lit, he led on. The passage continued down in a shallow, broad slope; Fie knew a hall designed for pallbearers when she saw one. It was simple, well-cut masonry, the ceiling fitting in a smooth arch over their heads. If the well above leaked into the ground, she saw no sign; the stone looked mostly dry and free of mold streaks.
She felt it all the same, dragging at her belly. Naming the fear made it easier to face, but easier was not the same as easy. When her torch wobbled, Tavin looked back. Whatever he saw in her face spurred him to hold out a hand.
Fie loathed herself for taking it. She loathed herself more for the way it felt right.
Halfway down, they passed two figures standing in armor bolted to the walls, one on each side of the hall. Torchlight caught on bone, on empty eyes peering through helmets wrought of gold-trimmed bronze.
“There are going to be more of those,” Tavin warned. “They’re former master-generals. They guard the catacombs even after death.”
Fie sucked in a breath as they passed. The thought of Draga standing on duty down here until she crumbled away didn’t sit well.
Then a strange pressure began to push on her ears, like a note too low to hear anywhere but in her gut. The deeper they went, the cooler and stiller the air became, until she winced at every crunch of her footsteps.
They passed three more sets of dead Hawks before they found the bottom, and Fie could only hope they were wholly below the bottom of the Well of Grace now. Her torchlight caught the edges of columns a few paces out; everything beyond it was a sea of dark.
Tavin found a small brass wheel in the wall and gave it a full turn. There was a soft gurgle. Then he touched his torch to a brazier mounted beside the wheel.
Fire caught on oil and spilled down channels cut along the walls, unfurling into a spiderweb of flame over the whole of a great, round room near as wide across as the Well of Grace. Doors lined the chamber in dark arches, gaping like toothless mouths. More dead generals were stationed beside every one, and great curving beams held up an eight-sectioned dome above.
More bones lined the room, set into morbid mosaics around each door, curving ribs outlining flames, fingerbones forming the rays of a backbone sun. Over each door sat a skull.
It all felt … different from the royal palace. Familiar. Fie couldn’t place why until she realized every column was studded with the same eight-pointed star she’d seen in Little Witness’s tower. All the stonework reminded her of the watchtower the longer she looked at it, if it had been buried underground instead of thrust into the sea.
So the catacombs were at least as old as Little Witness’s grave. The notion felt peculiar to her.
Tavin waved his torch at the doorways. “There are different crypts for different, well, kinds of Phoenix. The priests have their crypt there, and then there’s one for spouses of the monarch if they want it, and one for the immediate members of the family who never hold the throne, like siblings. Cousins get their own crypt, too. Or they did. Phoenixes are … fewer, these days.”
Fie squinted at the skulls over the doorways. Something was off about their jaws. She blinked. “Where are their teeth?”
“They’re pulled out in the burial ceremony,” Tavin said.
“For the Crows?” she asked, like she didn’t have near a half dozen Phoenix teeth stashed on her at that very moment. Tavin nodded. She frowned. Play the fool. “But … why would you need to pay the Crows? You survived the Sinner’s Plague.”
It was his turn to give her a tight, thin smile. “My father didn’t. But it’s been part of our traditions for so long, I don’t know what would happen if we changed it. Maybe the priests would all quit.” He barked an uncomfortable laugh. “Let me guess. You want to see the Tomb of Monarchs.”
“Do you want to show me the Tomb of Monarchs?” she asked, sly, and realized with a curl of revulsion that she hadn’t even needed Niemi’s help to flirt back.
He laughed again, more genuine this time, and pulled her forward.
It was like the first time she’d approached the Well of Grace all over again. Each step seemed to ring and rebound and hum in her ears, that pressure building and building in her skull. Tavin’s hand became less a comfort and more an anchor. She heard whispers—voices—chanting—
Bones, she realized. The Well of Grace had to be directly overhead, and that was bad enough, but everywhere she looked, she saw bones. The most dead she’d seen at once had been Karostei, one hundred scattered across the village. There had to be hundreds, maybe thousands of dead here, packed tight and dry, their bones singing to her in their sleep.
Tavin led her to a set of double doors across from the hallway and pushed them open. Inside was another round room, but it climbed like a massive chimney; the fire-lines had lit in here as well, carving bars of light all the way to the ceiling high above Fie’s head. Great stacks of what looked like spokeless wheels rose above them, studded in toothless skulls. At the eye-level wheel, Fie saw a stone casket for every skull; the ring of skulls was not complete, though, with four empty caskets lying in wait.
“Once it’s full up, there’s some kind of mechanism to raise all the rings,” Tavin said, letting go of her to turn in a slow circle. “Then they wheel in a new one and start filling it in. Oh. And, of course, there’s Ambra.”
Firelight fell across an ornately carved casket in the dead center of the room, raised on a low dais. A skull was set into a tarnished gold wreath atop the casket, a crown of gold wrought like feathers fused to the bone.
Fie couldn’t help noticing the Queen of Day and Night had managed to keep her teeth.
“Oh,” she said faintly. Wherever she set her eyes, it was as if the room skidded out from under them. She tried to steady herself against a wall, only for her fingers to brush skull.
The spark-song blared in her bones, resonant and demanding. She yelped and yanked her hand back, only to stumble on the shallow dais, dropping her torch. Tavin seized her wrist before she fell.
“Are you all right?” he asked, steadying her.
Fie stared at him, trying to scrape together an answer through the droning of the well, the chanting of the bones, the song of dead monarchs echoing off the walls of her skull—
“Fine,” she said dizzily.
He frowned, peering close, too close. “You don’t sound fine. We should get you out of here.”
Her heart rattled in her ears, a drumbeat to the cacophony. She hadn’t been this close to him, not like this, in too long. It still ached, it still burned.
He’ll know, some distant part of her warned. You’ll lose control of your teeth and he’ll figure it out, he’ll see your face, you have to get out, you have to—
Distract him, Niemi whispered.
Fie leaned forward and pressed her mouth to his.
It doesn’t mean anything, she told herself, none of this is real—
Tavin’s torch fell to the ground with a clatter.
Shaking hands skimmed her face, drew her closer, and she hated how much she missed this, hated how she curved into him like a bow he was stringing, hated her heart for leaping as he traced the line of her spine.
None of it’s real, she lied to herself as she curled her fingers in his too-short hair, trying to shut out the brief, flickering gasps of his thoughts whenever his teeth brushed her. This isn’t you, he doesn’t want Fie, he wants a dead girl—
Just don’t look at her face—
The thought broke in as his teeth grazed her jaw, the need and sorrow burning bone-deep.
You can do this, just don’t look—
Fie didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Of course it was all mummery on his part, of course none of it was real.
Tavin still wanted her, the real her. By every dead god, she hated him for it.
By every dead god, she couldn’t let him go.
None of it’s real.
That was the way of Peacocks, though, just as Khoda had said. It didn’t have to be real. It just had to be real enough.
They half shifted, half fell against Ambra’s casket. The marble cover grated in protest but only moved a hair as Fie let herself lean back, shivering first at the chill of the stone, then at Tavin’s hands slipping under her tunic, his mouth burning on hers.
She hated him still. She wanted him more.
She thought she might have him right here, on the grave of the Queen of Day and Night.
His fingers were too clever by far. Then he pushed her tunic up and knelt to press a kiss to her ribs. Fie sucked in a breath. Her knees faltered, and she scrabbled for a handhold on the casket.
For the second time, her fingers met bone.
But this time, there was no venom-sharp spark.
Fie blinked, gut lurching, at the sight of her fingers hooked in the empty eye socket of Ambra, Queen of Day and Night.
And then—simply, inescapably—she was pulled under.
* * *
She knelt before a throne, silk knotted around her head. It took but a thought to light it, and in the glassblack panes she saw her own reflection crowned in golden fire.
“We have chosen,” a crowd chanted at her back.
You chose wrong, she wanted to tell them. Oil dripped down her face until her reflection was streaked with fire.
* * *
She lay in a sea of sweat-stiff satin, and she was dying. Twelve figures stood around her bed, watching her gravely from beneath black silk hoods.
“You know the price,” a voice said, one Fie had heard before. “Will you pay it?”
“M-my word,” she coughed.
“A Covenant oath,” the voice said, firm.
She lifted her arm. “Cut it,” she croaked. A small silver dagger was produced and drawn swiftly across her palm, and a hand clasped hers.
“In flesh and blood do I make this oath,” she ground out. “… I will give up my crown and join you on your roads, as one of your own.”
“In flesh and blood do I make this oath.” The speaker stepped forward. It was the woman Fie had seen in a dream before, with her lined face and black silk robe. This time Fie saw a curious, well-made necklace wrought about her neck in silver and steel and bone, like a row of spikes—no—teeth.
It was a chief’s string.
They were Crows.
But their robes were silk, their hands gloved instead of wrapped in rags, the chief had wielded a proper knife—
She missed the chief’s side of the oath, drowned in coughing. “To the Covenant I swear it,” she gasped. “Now do it, damn you.”
“To the Covenant I swear it,” the chief echoed. “May my oath be kept in this life and, if I fail, the next.”
The chief waited, giving her a pointed look.
She relented, choking out the last few words. “May my oath be kept, in this life or the next.”
* * *
She drifted on her back in the cold, dark water of her favorite pond in the private royal garden, staring up at the sky.
“You can’t stay in there forever,” the chief called from nearby, black robe wafting on the mild breeze.
She knew what the Crow chief was here to collect. But she was not ready to leave all this. She was not ready to pay.
“Watch me,” Fie heard herself answer.
This time, as she sank into the water, she heard the chief’s muffled cry: “You swore to the Covenant, Ambra!”
Dark water closed over her head, and all was still.
* * *
Fie was back in Little Witness’s tower, the sea roaring around them, held back only by the stone walls. The dead god was smiling at her.
“Aye, we Crows had a Birthright. It was stolen. And if you want to take it back, you’ll need to keep your oath.”
* * *
Fie was only dimly aware of Tavin shaking her, of the blood running from her nose, of him carrying her from the Tomb of Monarchs. She only barely heard the chanting of the bones around her, singing what almost sounded now like Welcome, welcome, welcome.
Her mind was little but fog and dust devils of thought, spinning threads that snapped before she could pull them taut. But one kept winding round her skull, again and again, and that thought was not a dust devil nor a spindle, it was a hurricane, too immense to see it all from the shore.
It had never been Pa’s Covenant oath unkept, but one she’d sworn lives and lives ago.
It had been Ambra’s to keep.
And now, in this life, it was Fie’s.
PART THREE
CONQUERORS AND THIEVES
CHAPTER TWENTY
THE HEIR
Something cool and damp brushed over Fie’s mouth. Her eyes flew open.
She saw mahogany and teak and linen and red; then everything blurred again.
“Easy,” Tavin said somewhere above her. “Don’t push yourself.”
“Where am I?” She blinked until her vision cleared again.
“A spare room. We’re in the royal quarters.”
The room about her was—strange, she thought. Small for a royal bedroom and worn in a way the palace usually painted over. The walls were soft golden teak, the bedposts lacquered Hawk red, a familiar thick-woven blanket covering the mattress—
The last time she’d seen that blanket, she’d been sharing it with Tavin in Draga’s camp. This was his room, his real room.
She saw a modest collection of weapons neatly racked on the wall, light streaming in from a screened window facing a mossy cliff. Across from her sat a small shelf of scrolls, along with a washbasin and brass mirror beside a dish of what had once been rings, necklaces, and other jewelry before they’d conspired to knot into a solid ball the size of her fist. On the table beside the bed stood a simple brass lamp, a mammoth carved of ebony, an amulet of mammoth ivory with the master-general’s personal seal.
It was like a window into a part of Tavin she couldn’t bear to look at.
It was a room Niemi wasn’t meant to know.
“Sorry,” Tavin said after a moment. He was sitting at the foot of the bed, wringing a rag stained with blood. “Other than the nosebleed, you didn’t have any injuries that I … saw, and I didn’t know where else to take you.”
“This is fine.” She pushed herself up, and he handed her a mug of water. “Thanks. I … don’t know what happ
ened.”
It was half a truth.
Tavin passed her the bloody rag and tapped his chin. “You’ve still got some, er. Would you like me to get a doctor?”
Fie mopped at her face to buy herself a moment. When she surfaced, she had the best answer she could scrounge together: “Allergies,” she blurted out. “It’s just—allergies.”
“I see,” he said, in a way that meant he did not see at all. Then he rubbed the back of his neck, sheepish. “I apologize, I … may have moved … things … a little too fast, earlier.” She gave him a blank look. “In the tomb.”
Fie’s brow furrowed, still groggy. He hadn’t seen the visions of Ambra’s life, had he?
“When we kissed,” Tavin clarified, cheeks darkening. “I-I got a bit carried away.”
“Oh.” Fie shook her head distractedly. “No, I liked it.”
She’d seen Ambra’s life. She hadn’t called the spark from that bone. It had swallowed her whole anyway. Animal bones did that, aye, because they knew no better. Human bones knew to wait, not to offer their gifts or their secrets so freely.
But Ambra’s skull had just drawn her in, like it was part of her.
Tavin’s voice jostled her from her thoughts. “I want you to know,” he said, fumbling for words, “that if you feel like you have to go along with whatever I want, because of who I am—you don’t.”
His fingers were tracing unseen patterns on his wrist, where a glamour hid the scars.
Fie couldn’t stop herself; she reached over and caught his hand. “I know.”
Now, Niemi hissed. Take him. Finish what you started in the tombs. He’ll be ours.
The notion turned Fie’s belly. So did the notion of hearing him say Niemi’s name in the close, shuddering way he’d once breathed hers.
She let go. “I should probably go lie down. In my rooms. For a bit.”
She didn’t want to. She wanted to stay here with him, in a room that felt real. Fie wanted to unroll all his scrolls, look in his mirror, pick out the tangle of jewelry, run her hands over every bit of it until she could find a way to forgive him for selling her Crows to the queen.
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